Energized

by Edward M. Lerner

  “Behind us,” Thad screamed once more. He fired his coil gun again and again. The bots kept coming, too numerous to stop. Maimed bots, too, trailing shattered limbs.

  Now Felipe and Lincoln were firing, too.

  Bots swarmed up Felipe’s legs. He screamed.

  Dillon—ironically safe, for the moment, in the latched shelter—shouted to be released, to be told what was happening, and, finally, in inarticulate fear and rage.

  Jonas’s scream morphed into a burbling, choking death rattle.

  The coil gun twitched impotently in Thad’s grasp, its ammo spent.

  Not only his: Lincoln, cursing, hurled his gun at the bots teeming at his feet. Too late, Lincoln jumped. Tens of bots already crawled over him, their limbs and tools flashing. Red fog spurted from tiny rips and punctures in his suit.

  Thad leapt from the powersat.

  From twenty feet above the powersat, he saw that bots had avoided Marcus’s and Savvy’s tethers. To protect the two? Maybe he was safe here, too.

  It was a nice thought for the few seconds it lasted.

  Whoever controlled the swarming bots had evidently designated only those specific tethers off-limits. Bots clambered up Thad’s tether. He brushed them off with the barrel of the coil gun. More bots rushed up the tether, and he brushed them off, too—until one grabbed the gun.

  He flung gun and bot away as forcefully as he could, as more bots started up the tether.

  Throwing the gun had sent him into a rapid spin. There were bots all around, still inrushing from the farthest reaches of the powersat.

  Detouring for a good three feet around Marcus’s and Savannah’s tethers.

  Thad cast off the reels of both his tethers, to drift away from the bot hordes. With a gas pistol, he started jetting to the docking posts. He could take a hopper to Phoebe, grab the remaining escape pod there. Maybe he would be gone before the missiles hit, or the debris would take a while to disperse.

  To do what? To go where? He had nothing to live for.

  “I’m sorry,” he broadcast on the common channel. “For all the deaths. For the shame I’ve brought my family. For everything.”

  Then he turned off his radio and his heater.

  As the cold became all, as his thoughts, like his blood, thickened to syrup, he welcomed blissful oblivion.

  * * *

  “Are you okay?” a tremulous voice asked. It was the last voice Marcus expected to hear just then. Valerie’s voice.

  “Just shaken up,” Marcus radioed back. And still shaking. He kept that to himself. “Do you control the—”

  “You look okay.” She had hardly paused, not waiting for his answer. The Earth/comsat/PS-1 latency being, well, whatever it was at this moment, she might not yet have heard him. “I need you to jack into the main computer. It will be a secure link. Oh, and yes. I control the bots. I’ve sent them the order to stop swarming.”

  “On my way,” Marcus said.

  He reeled himself in, and saw Savvy doing the same. The bot army dispersed as he and Savvy made their way to the console. On nearby posts, cameras turned to follow their progress.

  A body, tethered into place, floated just above the access panel. The helmet visor had cracked. Pain and fear had twisted the dead man’s face, and his eyeballs bulged.

  An unfamiliar voice, a woman, said, “Keep the bodies.”

  Gingerly, Marcus and Savvy moved aside the body, still tethered so it would not float off. They used fiber-optic cables to jack in.

  “Is this secure?” Marcus asked.

  “As secure as is anything up here,” Savvy said. “When I was testing, that seemed secure. Of course four days ago, none of us trusted the network security enough to allow sysadmin access from the ground.”

  “We’re glad you took the chance,” Valerie said.

  “This is General Rodgers, Air Force,” the other woman introduced herself. “We don’t have much time. Is the powersat secured?”

  How could they be sure? Marcus wondered. “Four terrorists shut us into the shelter on Phoebe. All from The Space Place, and we have three bodies. We saw Stankiewicz jump off; we can, just barely, still see his suit, drifting. I’m not eager to go check him out.”

  “Our sensors say the body is cold.” Rodgers paused. “And we see another body floating a little farther away.”

  “Poor Dino,” Savvy said.

  “That leaves one unaccounted for, possibly armed, and just the two of you,” Rodgers said.

  “General, you’ve got to call off the missile strike,” Valerie said.

  “It’s not my call,” Rodgers answered softly, “but I can’t recommend it. Not with a terrorist unaccounted for.”

  Savvy said, “General, we control the beam. And we control the bots.”

  “We’ve suspended the beam,” Rodgers said.

  “If the last terrorist shows up,” Savvy said, “we still have the bots.”

  “Maybe there is no fourth guy,” Valerie said. “Wherever he is, he’s not visible to the surveillance cameras.”

  “About those missiles?” Marcus asked. “Any second now Savvy and I will hopper back to Phoebe for the last escape pod.” Because any chance is better than no chance. “We’ve saved the powersat, General. Dino Agnelli died to save it. Do not waste that sacrifice. Do not surrender the potential to build hundreds more like PS-1.”

  The silence stretched awkwardly.

  “General, we’re leaving,” Marcus said.

  “Wait,” Rodgers said. “If I’m not back in two minutes, run for it.”

  And for almost two minutes, no one said a word. Marcus scarcely breathed.

  “Stay put,” Rodgers said. “If you watch very closely, you may see payloads zipping past. They’ll arc by you, then splash down harmlessly in the South Pacific. That said, can you two hold out for a day? Where you are, not going to Phoebe or The Space Place?”

  Marcus remembered checking onboard supply depots, killing time while the others inspected. Four days ago, Savvy had said. It felt like a lifetime. Any one depot held more than enough oh-two, water, and batteries. “Yes, General, we can do that.”

  “Agreed,” Savvy said.

  “Good,” Rodgers said. “Within twenty-four hours, expect company: a shuttle of Special Ops folks. They’ll secure the powersat and Phoebe. Their shuttle will bring you down.”

  “Thank you, General,” Marcus said.

  “No,” Rodgers corrected. “Thank you.”

  Sunday evening, October 1

  “This is a very rushed op,” Charmaine said. “You sure about this?”

  “Concur, and yes,” Tyler said.

  He could almost appreciate how delicately she hinted that his last field op had been twenty-three years and two heart attacks ago. The action would be all of a five-minute walk from his own front door—and he would be driving to the op.

  None of which mattered. To succeed, the op demanded his personal connection, and he damn well meant it to succeed. Anyway, Yakov would be far more rushed than he.

  Tyler said, “And not that I’m superstitious or anything”—she snorted—“but things, finally, seem to be breaking our way.”

  “That they are.”

  Agency phones were as secure as cell phones could be, but that did not keep them both from speaking in circumlocutions. He said of the recaptured powersat, “Still behaving?”

  “And still functional.”

  “Excellent,” he said.

  Not secured, though. To secure PS-1 required putting troops up there and, until less than an hour ago, it had been impossible to safely prep a shuttle launch.

  Even if the Russians had failed to decrypt the latest radio links to PS-1, they knew—the world knew—the U.S. had launched a missile salvo. Anyone with a decent pair of binocs could see that PS-1 remained intact. Any country with a decent early-warning system knew the missile payloads had been allowed to soar past PS-1.

  So: hurried American announcements aside, the Russians knew who, however tenuously, controlle
d the powersat. They could not be happy about the reversal. The next few hours, until the U.S. could scramble a shuttle, were crucial. Until then, what was to stop the Russians from launching their own shuttle to, heroically, secure—and take occupation of?—the powersat?

  The heat-targeting capability their agents had demonstrated against a Cosmic Adventures shuttle just two days earlier.

  “Okay,” Charmaine said. “If I don’t hear from you within the hour, I’ll come looking. Good luck.”

  “Thanks.” Tyler hung up, hoping matters did not come down to luck.

  * * *

  Yakov grimaced in concentration, trying to digest the latest setback—and the ambassador’s fury. Yakov drummed his fingers on his desk. He rocked in his chair. Vodka was not helping his mood any more than the Shostakovich symphony that pounded from the stereo. How had his operatives lost control of—

  The doorbell rang.

  Through an exterior security camera, Yakov saw a pizza van parked at his curb. A guy in a baseball cap and garish red company vest stood at the front door holding an insulated pizza carrier.

  Yakov had not ordered anything; the man had to have the wrong house. As Yakov pressed the intercom button, the pizza guy tugged on the pizza carrier, lifting its flap to reveal a note: Look at me. The driver removed his cap, ostensibly to scratch the top of his head.

  The “pizza guy” was Tyler Pope.

  “Be right there,” Yakov said. He hurried to the door. “Come in while I get my wallet.”

  The moment the door closed, Pope removed the hat and vest. He said, “You don’t have much time, Yakov.”

  “I don’t understand—”

  “Playing charades has been fun, but not today. You are FSB. I’m CIA. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Yakov conceded.

  “I don’t know what the Restored Caliphate has against you, but I do know that the Caliph’s Guard has a team in country set for a snatch. In town, actually. Yesterday and today the chatter ramped way up. My bosses are very unhappy with you, with very good cause, and I’ve been told to look the other way.

  “But scumbag that you are, I can’t get past that you have diplomatic immunity. So get the hell out of Dodge. The tower at Reagan National is primed to clear a diplomatic flight. You keep your plane prepped, right?”

  “But Valentina—”

  “Has three Agency people keeping an eye on her. Your wife will be fine.” Pope set down the pizza carrier. “Have you noticed any new surveillance recently? You must have, because these guys are more enthusiastic than skilled.”

  The gray sedan. The white van. And if the Caliph’s Guard had come for him …

  “What do you propose?” Yakov asked.

  Tyler offered the cap and vest. “Put these on. Take the pizza van. Get to the airport.”

  Yakov’s antennae tingled. “And leave you—”

  “Yeah, yeah, you keep secret papers or whatever here.” Pope took plastic wrist ties out of his pocket. “The clock’s ticking, damn it. Bind me to a chair or whatever. Valentina, when she finds me, can call the cops or your embassy.”

  “Right.” He bound Pope’s wrists behind him, arms around one of the sturdy floor-to-ceiling decorative columns that separated the foyer from the dining room. “I owe you one, Tyler.”

  “Then owe me two. Consider it my final neighborly favor. Is your Psycho friend local?” Pope laughed. “I know you won’t tell me. But the chatter involved Psycho Cyborg, too. Who, I imagine, has no immunity. Because what the Caliph’s Guard will do…”

  Yakov shuddered. “Point taken.” He slipped on the vest and cap.

  “Don’t forget the pizza carrier. Keys for the van are in the vest.”

  “I won’t forget this,” Yakov said.

  “Good to know,” Pope answered.

  Yakov sauntered to the van, warning himself not to look too casual. Turning out of the subdivision, he spotted the gray sedan by the side of the road. Two people still sat inside.

  He phoned ahead to the airport. And using the must-flee code phrase, he texted Irinushka to meet him at the general aviation terminal.

  Psycho Cyborg deserved the same warning Pope had given him.

  * * *

  Dillon’s universe had shrunk to a small closet. It would have been crowded for one. With ghosts, too …

  If only the end would get here already. Instead the awful screaming echoed and reechoed in his brain.

  And the dreadful hissing when Jonas’s helmet had—well, Dillon was not sure quite what. He wasn’t sure of anything, except the awful screams, then death rattles, and then eeriest of all, the silence.

  He had screamed, too. He had pounded on the shelter door. No one could hear it, but he couldn’t not pound.

  What had happened? What could have happened?

  After he had screamed, and moaned, and bemoaned his fate, a fragile clarity returned. Maybe the stranger who had shown up with Jonas was not who Jonas expected. Maybe the stranger had turned on Jonas. And if one stranger had arrived on the powersat, why not more? Was that not, in fact, likely?

  Dillon switched from the mission frequency to the common, unencrypted channel. And people were chattering! A man and a woman. Another woman, her responses so delayed that she must be on Earth.

  To have been trapped in this shelter proclaimed, if not Dillon’s complete innocence, at least his reticence. Especially if Jonas and the rest were no longer alive to contradict him.

  “Hello? Anyone?” Dillon called. “Anyone here on PS-1?”

  “Who is this?” the man asked. “Where are you?”

  “My name’s Dillon. The … terrorists made me come with them. They shut me in a radiation shelter.”

  “Hold on a second.”

  The newcomers must have switched to a private channel for a while. A long while. Dillon wondered if they meant to leave him in his closet. If they did, he could not blame them.

  “I know who you are, Dillon. And I saw you holding a gun on Phoebe.”

  “I was blackmailed to bring those men to The Space Place. At that point, I think they decided I knew too much about them. That’s why they gave me the gun. I couldn’t stay on Phoebe once everyone there believed I was one of the terrorists.”

  Skeptically, “Hold on.”

  “Wait! I’m low on oh-two.”

  Another pause. “Okay. I see a shelter with its latch jammed. I’m guessing that’s you. Hit the door.”

  Dillon pounded, the door flexing beneath his fist. “Here! See me?”

  “Yeah. Did you hear what happened to your cronies?”

  He shuddered. “Yes.”

  “Remember that. When I give you the word, come out very carefully.” The inside latch wiggled. “Very slowly.”

  Dillon opened the door just enough to show his hands, empty, then grabbed an exterior handhold to swing himself out. Two people in green counterpressure suits—MORGAN and JUDSON, their suit labels read—watched as Dillon tethered himself to the nearest guide cable. Judson inspected Dillon head to toe, front and back and took his tool kit before Morgan offered an oh-two tank.

  Hundreds of bots all but surrounded them. If Dillon’s eyes did not deceive him, some of the bots were flecked with red.

  He shuddered. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank anyone yet,” a new voice answered. “I’m Pope, by the way. You and I are going to have a chat. As soon as you’re jacked in.”

  Dillon’s new captors gave him a long roll of fiber-optic cable. Long enough to hang himself, he thought. A deranged cackle escaped him.

  “You find this situation funny?” Pope demanded.

  “No!” Because Dillon had to wonder: Why question him here? Why not wait a few hours till he could be properly—interrogated—on Earth? Unless they had not yet decided whether to bring him. “No,” he repeated, detesting the quaver in his voice.

  “Good. Now tell me about your cronies.”

  And Dillon babbled. About how he met Yakov. About their arrangement, and the brilliant engineers
Yakov had provided. About the OTEC platform.

  That he could discuss the Santa Cruz incident, and that little girl, without as much as a catch in his throat made Dillon ill. The last few days had made him … callous? No, numb. How could he mourn one child and her grandfather with the blood of hundreds, maybe thousands, on his hands?

  “And Yakov is getting away, scot-free,” Pope said. “Skipping the country. Flying away. Not that we could touch him anyway. Diplomatic immunity.”

  Diplomatic immunity. Pope made the words sound obscene. Like some horrible miscarriage of justice. Or maybe, Dillon thought, that’s how I feel.

  Through the view port at Dillon’s feet, beautiful Earth was just past full phase. Only Earth was not everywhere beautiful: the inky smudge of the Venezuelan disaster tore at his heart. By daylight, the spill and smoke was the only damage he could see. Not like the night-visible rolling blackouts that had surged back and forth across Europe.…

  And then it hit him: Pope had volunteered information. Why?

  “Skipping the country,” Dillon said. “How?”

  “On his private jet, speeding across the Atlantic. The only plane in the air for thousands of miles. Doubtless laughing his ass off at us.”

  At that instant, Dillon understood what Pope wanted. What could not be put into words. The price of Dillon’s ticket to the ground.

  He braced his feet against a guide cable. Even as he yanked great lengths of tether free from his reel, he leapt. He soared over the bot hordes, and then the tether pulled him up short. He began arcing down.

  Toward the nearest main computer complex.

  * * *

  Yakov had flown many times across the Atlantic. He had never before seen the radar screen empty. It was uncanny.

  Irina Ivanovna sat in the copilot’s seat, noise-canceling earphones shielding her cochlear implants from the drone of the engines. “Where will we go?”

  “Moscow.” Where else? “As disappointed as I am that the Americans did not destroy PS-1, the operation remains a tactical success. American extremists used an illegal American weapons platform to terrorize most of the world. In the process, we made everyone more dependent than ever on Russian oil.”

  “Will everyone see things as you do?”